The Legacy Of Odysseus

The famous ‘Cave of the Nymphs’, where Ulysses hid
His accumulated wealth on waking in Ithaca, we did
Not see.  Nor, in Stavros, could we locate
The remains of his palace (not that great,
By all accounts).  Laertes’ Farm we saw;
Basically olive trees, some stones and nothing more.
Polis, too, we found – a glorious place.
But of ancient sunken cities, not a trace.
And yet this was his isle.  Rocky,
And double-humped, every inch of this land
Is his, while a glance to sea always gives
The feeling he has just, at last, arrived.  His stocky,
Unmistakeable frame, and his crafty hand
Are manifest in every village.  Odysseus lives.

(31.8.96)

The Game

“Father, let us play.”  A fearful old
Potentate among dulling perfumes and fans,
I think of all that I had bartered and sold
To reap the acme and nadir of every man’s
Life (the sweat of bullocks trudging through the mud
Of the patchwork paddy-fields, the maiden’s modest blush
As ochre skin turns to scarlet flood).
“With what and how shall we play?” I ask in the hush
That has lasted too long.  “It is easy, my father:
Give me but something, even the merest toy.”
“But alas, my son, I have nothing,” I parry, “ – or rather,
What I had is already yours, my dearest boy.”
“O sir, I know that your mighty bullocks have ploughed,
And your fair maidens threshed... ” (my head bowed

Slightly, I wait for what comes next
As a condemned man expects the swinging blade) 
“Go on,” I say, as if reciting a text
Already written, a part that must be played.
“And so, my generous lord,” – here, he smiles – 
“All I ask are a few seeds of rice.”
Like a fool, I laugh, trying to fathom the wiles
That lie behind.  “And the game, my son?”  And in a trice
He says, “ – Just this: place one grain on the first
Square of a chessboard; two grains
On the second, and double to the end – a little thing.”
I assent, and order my slaves –  though fearing the worst –  
To begin.  The child sings, and such strange refrains:
“Checkmate, the shah is dead: long live the king....”

(31.8.1996)

A Classic

The problem, then, facing the Greek pol-
eis – those on the mainland, but excluding Sparta through its lack
Of appropriate traditions, on the islands, and among the col-
onies found to the far West and along the Black
Sea coast – was this.  Having created
The basic elements of the classical temple, it proved
Impossible to reconcile them completely.  Stated
Simply, either the extreme triglyphs were moved
Past the centre of the columns, or the latter stood
Proud of the former, leading to an ungain-
ly overhang.  Some said symmetry should never
Be sacrificed; others, though, held good
Design meant following function; all maintain-
ed the end-result should be a possession for ever.

(28.8.96)

The Greeks In The East

Nobody buys food in Venice: there are no
Corner shops or supermarkets in the city.
Nor do people live here: go
To a doorway and you find only hotels.  But pretty
Well the world is an artist, to judge at least
By the galleries and museums found at every turn.
Hardly moribund, each summer this carneval feast
Of non-physical nourishment must spurn
Its visitors for simple lack of space.  Could 
This be the sinking West’s future: to make
A glorious exhibition of itself?  If so, we should
Not talk of loser or coloniser, since this is a game of take
And mutual take.  Look at St Mark’s Square:
Half the Japanese nation is happy to be there.

(19.8.96)

The Greeks In The West

Back to the Palazzo Grassi, this time
To see ‘The Greeks in the West’.  At first, I’d not
Intended to go: it hardly sounded prime
Viewing – some sandstone fragments, a pale pot
Or two.  But there, re-oriented, it dawned on me
And my muddled, senescent brain what a colossal show
This was.  It supplied, through a lucid exege-
sis in the best tradition, a sense of how what we know
As the Classical was forged – from the origin of the Doric
To the perfecting of the temple’s majestic hexastyle.
Moreover, each room directed my attention
To the inescapable fact that much of this historic
Achievement was the work of the margins: while
Athens fiddled, the colonies burned with invention.

(19.8.96)

Odyssey

The saga began at an unspeakable hour of the day
When we left London and took a taxi-cab
Down to Gatwick.  From there, half-way
Across Europe to Cephalonia airport, to grab
An oven-hot coach and begin a journey straight
Out of fable.  First, the city of Argostoli,
And its impossibly narrow streets.  Undulat-
ing like an eel, our bus moved on to worse folly,
Negotiating the goat-track roads that cling
To the curves of the unsayably beautiful head-
lands and turquoise bays delimiting the isle, to bring
Us to Fiscardo.  From the quay, we gingerly thread-
ed our way along the ship’s gang-plank to embark
On the short last leg of our voyage.  But hark....

(16.8.96)

Echt Oder?

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I linger in the Rosenkavalier restaurant,
Eat goulash soup and Wiener schnitzel, sip
Hundertwaßer’s mineral water.  Want-
ing are only the strains of the marvellous yet mindless trip-
le-time lilt of Johann Strauß’s Blue Danube waltz 
To make me feel rather too close to the heart
Of the unbearably kitsch in Österreich, of the cloying and false.
Yet just here really is the barycentre, the start
Of all the Gaßen in Mitteleuropa.  This place,
A mezzanine in the Südbahnhof, is station-
ed between the east and south platforms; deft
Migrations of peoples across this anonymous space
Route them back to every ex-nation
Of the Royal and Imperial.  Austria is what is left.

(10.8.96)

Lake Look-alikes

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In the depths of the summer doldrums, when the atmosphere
Hangs heavy like an old, bedouin blanket, then
It is skin-still.  Often, its waters appear
To seep upwards, infinite diffuse ten-
tacles that suck down air and soak in light
Until the other shore is quite smeared away,
And what was a lake, to the too-credulous sight
Seems a boundless sea.  Sometimes, on a day
Of clouds and wind and rain, its back rucks
To jagged-edged waves, as if, in jest,
A thousand weather gods a million tucks
Had made, tugging tiny wires with nary a rest.
These are among the faces of the Lago di Garda;
As varied – and unsubtle – as a neophyte actor at RADA.

(28.7.96)

In Grodno

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Five o’clock in the morning.  First they took
My offending, visa-less passport, then they came
For me.  Hauled out, politely but in a manner that brook-
ed no discussion, I abandoned my Polish couchette shame-
facedly, as if already admitting to crook-
dom before the People and the comrades who in their name
Guarded the ultimate frontiers.  Perhaps I shook
As I left the Vilnius sleeper (though I blame
The cold spring air), and gave a vague look
At the concrete block which made up the place’s fame.
A city that, found in any book,
Would be deemed too unlikely, so starkly the same,
So bleak.  Except for a square of amber light
Where a man stood obliviously, and shaved away the night.

(25.7.96)

Strange Manoeuvres

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Stop a moment, and think how much easier it is
To pull off out of a car space
Than steer back in.  You’re the bus-
iness if, with a deft, single wrist-spin, you place
Your jam-jar smack plum in the middle
Of the waiting spot between the sodding eternal
Cortina and naff BMW.  Fiddle
And faff, trying to find the bloody infernal
Angle to get the vehicle parallel and the wheels
Hard to the kerb (rather than on it) and you’re marked
As a loser, he (or she) to whom Life deals
A duff hand.  Yet all are unparked
On the Greatest Road, stuck in fast reverse
Through Time, after a big enough spot for a hearse.

(11.2.1996)

The Word In The Stone

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A legend: two warrior-brothers put slaughter
Behind them; live (with their sister) in a rough hut
— and here the tale, passed from mother to daughter,
From father to child, moves into myth — where a rutt-
ing cervo arrives from the east, with a bough of golden
Fruit in its antlers.  At dusk a wolf carries wood:
The men burn great fires (“O remember the olden
Times of blood; let us pray as we once stood,
Together.”)  Its gist I do not comprehend,
But its truth I have literally seen, carved in granite,
At The Stones of the Gods show, in Bergamo.
The image of a stag, a man’s head blend-
ing with the disk of the rising sun — that story: can it
Not be from five thousand years ago?

(10.12.1994)

Motorini Di Roma

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The composer Respighi detected it in a city
Of pines and fountains.  The Fontana di Trevi’s thunder
And Piazza Navona’s High Baroque rivers are pretty
Familiar; as for the trees, well, no wonder
If, in the original urban landscape, they’re
More of a rarity (some fine specimens round
By the Forum).  But it’s not in wood or stone, where
All is classical nobility, or in the lush sound
Of a tone-poem representing these,
That the whiff of La Dolce Vita is caught most fresh.
Its essence is found in the petrol-polluted breeze
That winds its mad-cap way through the tangled mesh
Of side-streets, marking out the giddy track
Of a langorous Roman borne off on a moped’s back.

(13.9.94)

Fratelli d'Italia

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An hour we’ve been at the airport.  “But how can you talk
Of Narrative?”  “ — The Narrator, then?”  “Here comes Proust,”
Says Jean-Claude, smiling indulgently.  “Walk
Into the kitchen — ” (majolica on the narrow shelves, roost-
ing like multi-coloured turkeys) “ — the champagne’s in the fridge,”
Antonio shouts.  “Reliable?  Don’t make me laugh....”
"Remember ‘Les Demoiselles’....”  “Or the Charles Bridge
Back in Prague.”  “Aber,” asks Klaus, “on whose behalf
Does the author speak?”  Silence, broken by the clink
Of yellowing table silver, and of sirens next
Door.  “ — Pure Varèse, don’t you think?”
Until, after a hundred such sallies, perplexed
And homesick, I whisper: “book, never end.”  For in truth
These were my brothers, once, in a land called Youth.

(16.8.94)

Watching Water Wrackets

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Fat lads with sea-shrivelled willies, a turtle,
Rivers of curious numbers, the usual dog
Latin (postea vero quisque) — all hurtle
Out of a picture drowning in memories, a huge log-
Jam of obsessions: welcome to a Greenaway flaunt
Entitled ‘Watching Water’.  And where should he hold
Such an acqueous orgy but in my most-belovèd haunt,
The Palazzo Fortuny?  Venice and its tourism, bold
Young ladies pert amidst tempests, lapidary men
Called George flung lagoon- and sky-ward: they flow
Through that house as if a secret tap were open,
Perhaps the one in a room they never show.
An encounter, then, I just really could not miss;
But, for Pete’s sake, is somebody taking the piss...?

(26.3.94)

Future Past

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It could be a face from a distant year N
Thousand: some scathing Schwarzenegger clone,
A super-cool, super-steel android hulk with a yen
For plastic violence.  OK, say this is erron-
eous: perhaps some abstract construct — planes
Of anger scything hurled volumes.  In any 
Case, it is faux Fascist, colonising domains
Stamped ‘Force’, ‘Tomorrow’, ‘World’ and two-a-penny
Slogans of that ilk.  But it’s a toy out of gear, 
The lines limp, the colours dull-drab hues
Of blue-black and mud-red on a ground
Of soiled yellow.  The failure is in the year:
1958.  It’s old news,
Hankering after a Futurism never very profound.

(22.3.94)

A Chinese Scroll

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In the top right-hand corner, descending
Cross-slashes and canted squiggles announce
A different meaning, one that the uncomprehending
Westerner might view askance, denounce
As quaint chinoiserie, but which, of course,
In the light of cultural relativism, must
Be accepted as equally valid.  And so, perforce,
The jaded occidental mind, distrust
Put aside for now, juggles with a new
Perspective.  Craggy rocks high in mist,
The long dark triangles of the bamboo plant
Scattering clouds of diagonals, meandered through
By the dusty path’s slow zig-zag.  Enlist
The mandarin’s eye: give beauty another slant.

(22.3.94)

Javan Batik

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“Batik?” “Tidak.”  Snootily we fanned the pitch
Away in the thick hot sponge of air
That was Jalan Malioboro: a steaming, rich
Soup of Asia, Yogya’s thoroughfare — 
And the very heart of Java.  Not that we weren’t led
By the nose.  We went to see the ‘closing days’
Of the ‘government students’ show; naïvely said
Which were the pick of the lot, gave our praise,
And only smelt a rat when our choices were hung
Barring the door.  A trap, with sickly-sweet tea
As part of the bait.  We parried, finally, with a tongue-
in-cheek offer, an insult of a price.  He
Then it was who was forced to say: “Tidak — no.”
Outside, we savoured the crowds’ jumbled flow.

(16.3.94)

Icon

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Light.  Holy Mother of God, head
Showered in gold.  Light.  Holy Mother
Of God, swathed in rich folds, red,
Ripe as blood.  Light, thrice hallowed.  Another
Look, and the humble faithful reap through grace
A vision of the shining Son.  But when I scan
From the hem of her robe, stiff-plied and piled, in place
Of effulgence there is only reflection.  I can
Read the image: a shrouded fifth colour of gilt,
Byzantine, stylised, a recondite architectonic.
It’s a shallow version, though, sheepishly built
On two-dimensional surfaces, a sardonic
Best guess.  I analyse as a beast ruminates;
They understand whom the Icon first illuminates.

(16.3.94)

Grazie, Thank You

Great Jove, who once with thundering, rolling clouds
Royally stepped down from heaven to earth
And amazed the peoples as they huddled together in crowds,
Zero is, for all his wonder and worth,
In our eyes when we contemplate your gift:
Exquisite, refined and generous — all these and more.
To do it and our feelings justice, our minds shift
Hopelessly: where are the words that will soar
And compel the empyrean’s denizens to hymn
Noble utensils, objects and accoutrements?
Knowing not, at first, our hearts sank — to
You we owed verbal pearls.  Though slim,
Our final, feeble choices at least make sense:
Unadorned and ordinary, they’re ‘Grazie’ and ‘Thank you.’

(31.1.93)

Monteverdi's Flowers

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Behold the Blessed Virgin, immaculate
In Titian’s wreaths of lilac, violet and rose,
A spring bloom of culture.  But however great
The mighty Assumption, however bold or beautiful, to suppose
We’d entered for this were wrong.  We came that way
Thanks to a different art: music.  Not notes,
Though there was an organ which began to play
The rite while we harvested masterpieces, our coats
Wetting the stones as an aftermath of the rainy day
Outside.  Not a mass, but a body — one our throats
Tightened at: Monteverdi, buried in his second 
City.  Though barred from us, you honoured him willy-nilly
With poor, cut flowers.  O words, grow fecund:
Sing of this winter blossom, my perfect lily.

(23.8.92)

The Seasoning

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For us Vivaldi seems the epitome of beauty,
Order and civilised taste.  The measured tread 
Of his chords, the pat sequences with their duti-
ful resolution all bespeak more head
Than heart.  But there’s another side, hidden
(In true Carnival fashion) by this perfect mask.
The wild, violinistic frenzies which rocket unbidden
From those same textures, the pyrotechnics which ask
No permission for their sheer, physical joy
In music-making, these surely are born
Of a raging fire that belies our image of a coy,
Cold priest.  This I love: torn
Between crude invention and over-prim reasoning
He showed how one was improved with the other’s seasoning.

(1992)

Invisible Citizen

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To reach the famous scene the couple had passed
Through the whole city.  They had walked around squares
Full of bold flags and harlequin acrobats; cast
Quick glances at the Syrian merchant’s wares
— Toledan steel, porphyry jugs and myrrh;
Had halted — just for a moment — deftly to frame
The old palace with the heraldic monuments that were
Odd, but apt; they’d crossed the bridge whose name
Means ‘Singular Innocence’, and arrived at the bank
Of the river.  There they stood, in rapt fervour,
Pondering.  “Look,” the man said, his gaze
Lowered, “le alghe.”  With a smile, she saw the lank
Waving fronds.  Opposite, the bald observer
Noted it all, then turned to the streets’ loved maze.

(5.10.92)

La Tempesta

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Once upon a time, I wrote a tale 
Full of adventure, melancholy, obsession and yearning.
Among the imperilled monuments a male
Of our species — a boy in life, though ancient in learning —
Experienced Venice.  Each day he did his duty:
St. Mark’s, its square, and all the Academy’s glory;
Each day he suffered exquisite blows of beauty.
More shocking, though, to him and to my story,
Was the effect of his lodging: an old palazzo, now
A hostel, with cracked and fading frescoes — but above
All with two gorgeous women.  There he saw how
Really men are blown away — hurt, not by art, but by love.
A fable; we share with it only a stormy rain
Which fell unceasingly.  You gave me joy, not pain.

(2.5.92)

Speaking Of Venice

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Let’s talk Goldoni.  Long after he had left his birth-
Place, as a bitter old man in exile, he wrote
His life story.  Knowing well the worth
Of a land he had lost, all he could do was dote 
On it.  “This city is like nothing on earth;
Every time that I saw it again” — and I quote — 
“Was a new surprise to me.”  Today, too,
These interlocking labyrinths of canal and street
Can leave us mute.  Humbled by loveliness, who
Does not shamble, or walk with leaden feet,
Gawping lugubriously?  But better to do
Justice to this beauty, we should leap to greet
La Serenissima in Carlo’s tongue:
A liquid language, not so much spoken, as sung.

(1992)

Walks With L.

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On reflection, I imagined Him as a dapper old gent
Poised elegantly with a brass-tipped ebony cane,
Pausing to contemplate another jewel as He went
Over His well-trod itineraries again,
Those serpentine roads through the city’s art and past
That He revealed in the opus ‘Venice and its Lagoon.’
And who the hell is ‘He’?  — Lorenzetti, the mast-
er-guide of my purgatory there.  Discovering the boon
Of that book half-redeemed me: it gave
Me a world, a personal map, an articulate love.
And so, mirroring this, I returned with Her
(With you) to look in the back-streets for a brave
Way forward; and found one — thanks be to heaven above — 
Confronting the joys that will be with those that were.

(1992)